iOS Release

[tristan-k]

For full cross-platform compatibility a iOS release would be neat.

[tfg13]

I would really love for this to exist, and I thought about it a lot in the past.

However, I'll be completely honest with you here: I see no way this will happen any time soon. The android version mostly only exists because LanXchange happens to be written in Java, which also what Android apps are written in, so I was able to reuse most of the code.

But even if I had time (and a device) to develop on, iOS is a much more restricted platform than Android. Even on Android, the concept of 'files' is increasingly abstracted away, and direct access to the file system is getting more restricted and limited. Additionally, LanXchange is built in a way that there is no central server involved. This is nice because it even works without internet and nobody runs a server for you that you need to trust. On the other hand, the functionality typically performed by a server now needs to be handled by all participating clients, which is a problem on mobile platforms that seek to save power and offload exactly these things to "the cloud". I spend quite some time working around some of these issues on Android to get to a state where it mostly works.

From what I know about iOS, these things are much harder (if not impossible) there. This is why people say iOS runs more stable: It does not allow apps to do as many things as Android can do. Unfortunately, this might make it impossible for a potential iOS version to work in the same way it does right now. I would probably need to introduce a server on the internet as a middleman for file transfers, something I don't really want to do. This aside, I would not have the time and resources required for doing this properly anyway :/